John Dinges was one of hundreds of young idealists who gathered in Chile to experience the revolution that began with the election of President Salvador Allende. Allende, though an avowed Marxist, promised real democracy and real social change. Many who came were political exiles from South American countries that had already become military dictatorships. It was a political journey full of hope; it ended in a military coup, encouraged by the United States, in which thousands were rounded up and executed. Two Norteamericanos—Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi—came to support Allende and ended up being secretly executed in the first days after the coup. Their murders inspired the Hollywood movie Missing. John Dinges’s book, Chile in Their Hearts, unravels the mystery of how and who they were killed, and takes you with him on his investigation. (Spoiler: the movie got much of it wrong.) His surprising findings shed light not only on an iconic period in Latin America but provide signposts for the current slide toward authoritarianism in the United States.

John Dinges is the Godfrey Lowell Cabot Professor of International Journalism Emeritus. He was a freelance journalist in Chile during the Allende government and for five years during the Pinochet dictatorship, writing for Time, The Washington Post and other media. His latest book, Chile in Their Hearts (University of California Press 2025, completes a trilogy on Chile during its most turbulent years, which includes Assassination on Embassy Row (on the terrorist killing in Washington DC of exile leader Orlando Letelier) and The Condor Years. He is also the author of Our Man in Panama, on the rise and fall of Gen. Manuel Noriega. He has founded or co-founded three news organizations in Chile: APSI: Actualidad Internacional (1976); CIPER (2008); and Archivos Chile (2011). He worked on the foreign desk of the Washington Post and later served as foreign editor and managing editor for NPR News.